The Yakuza I knew were all very well mannered. They had some nice houses too. It was the chimpira that I tried to stay away from. Those posers like to start stuff and since they are trying to get noticed, they are more apt to cross the line.

Besides, without Yakuza, who'd take care of the yaki venues outside the Jinjas?

Ragevx1 wrote:Little more detail? What are Yaki Venues outside the Jinjas?

焼き to grill. referring in this case to 屋台 (やたい).
神社 are Shinto shrines.
For all 祭（まつり: festivals) which take place at shrines, there are often a lot of various yatais at which to buy food, snacks and play games. Depending on where you go, these yatai can often be run by yakuza, or at least be yakuza-sponsored.

Oh you mean like those food-stalls that sell food? Like the ones in parks and theme-parks? If you do I remember seeing those kind of stall in Gokusen series runned by a Yakuza family and by the way, your Japanese is too advanced for me too read (exept the hiragana and kata parts

Ragevx1 wrote:Oh you mean like those food-stalls that sell food? Like the ones in parks and theme-parks? If you do I remember seeing those kind of stall in Gokusen series runned by a Yakuza family and by the way, your Japanese is too advanced for me too read (exept the hiragana and kata parts

If you ever come upon a kanji you don't know, you can copy it and paste it into Jim Breen's online dictionary to find out the reading. In this case, I wrote the meaning / pronunciation next to each one.http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~jwb/

You may lay it up among your treasure trove of knowledge that the real Japan very seldom matches what people who have never lived here think it is. It makes for some very disillusioned gaijins.

The Yakuza are, in their own warped way, first and foremost about turning a buck. They'll do it inside the law if they can, on the thin edges of it without a qualm, and go outside of it if need be.

Yes, they do hold the concessions on many food stalls, and at your typical Japanese festival you can pretty much bet money that every stand manned by out of town folks are run by the Yakuza. They don't start trouble; they are there to turn a tidy profit off the citizenry and then return year after year to do it again. They're not ones to ass up a good thing without good cause.

Here in Kiryu, where I live, at our local festival many years ago I got a firsthand look at this. Two groups of around 30 or 40 young out-of-town self-styled wannabe thugs came to a central intersection at the festival and were about to have a good old fashioned no-holds-barred throwdown right there in the intersection. One.....read that carefully....ONE....guy in his 50s running one of the food stalls stepped out and told them to take it elsewhere away from the festival area. They all immediately stopped, then as a group peacefully proceeded to the grounds of a high school near my home, and well away from the festival, to continue their activities. I walked along, as I was going home anyway, and can attest that they did in fact do just as he told them to do.

They're business people, and they don't want negative publicity messing with their bottom line.

I should add that the guy looked like your average next-door blue-collar oyaji, not all tattooed and punch-permed like you might expect of Yakuza, and that he was calm, didn't raise his voice, and the whole thing took no more than about five seconds. Situation resolved; commerce rolls on.